


Sally Hawkins Dance

by joycecarolnotes



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Feelings Realization, Gen, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22236343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/pseuds/joycecarolnotes
Summary: Richard agrees to chaperone a dance at the retirement home. One of the residents helps him realize his feelings for Jared.
Relationships: Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks
Comments: 21
Kudos: 77
Collections: Silicon Valley Winter Exchange 2k19





	Sally Hawkins Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallfromgraceonmyface92](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallfromgraceonmyface92/gifts).



> Happy SV winter exchange, fallfromgraceonmyface92/a-pair-of-boys-back-in-business! You prompted "meet the parents" and this is my weird take on that. Thank you for such a fun suggestion <3

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker:

"Paging Jared to the rec room. Jared, you're needed in the rec room please."

Jared puts down his tattered copy of _The Lighthouse Dancer_ and glances at the name tag pasted to his vest—JARED, STAFF MEMBER, HARMONIOUS RETIREMENT HOMES—as if to confirm his own identity. So swept up in the tumult and romance of the story, he almost believed he was on that rocky, windswept island off the coast of Maine with the dashing Damien and tragic, starry-eyed Fiona, not here in Ethel Baker's somber bedroom.

"My gosh, that's me!" Jared rises from the chair next to the high bed. He smooths the wrinkles from his slacks and pats his hair down. In all these years, he's never changed it.

"Ethel," Jared says, "think you can keep Richard company until I get back? Entertain him? Don't be mean."

Richard feels a bit shell-shocked, wildly out of his element. His mouth opens and closes, as if he means to protest but can't quite come up with the words to say. He isn't sure exactly why he came here in the first place, why he agreed to attend the Harmonious Retirement Homes First Annual Sally Hawkins Dance ("a modern update on the Sadie Hawkins Dance: anyone can ask anyone," Jared explained; "so you mean like... a dance?"). Richard also didn't understand why Jared thought he'd be the perfect choice to chaperone ("those sprightly, elven hips! I just know there's a bona fide dancer inside you, yearning for the chance to break free!"), or why a dance for old people even _needed_ chaperones. What trouble could they possibly get up to?

Old people. Shit. Richard had just barely gotten used to being around young people. _Any_ people, for that matter. It'd taken him all these years.

Still, Jared had asked, and Richard was eager for the chance to spend time with him. Their once-every-few-months, when-Stanford-was-on-break lunch dates had been feeling like less than enough. Richard missed the nights they used to spend, talking in that musty garage, or in Jared's old condo, having someone he could tell the things it only ever felt safe to say to Jared. Richard had to admit he even missed Jared's constant, adulating overestimations of him. He missed having someone around who believed in him the tenacious-bordering-on-insane way that Jared did.

So he combed his hair, put on his corduroy jacket. He'd even arrived early, so they would have extra time to catch up. And now, because Jared overestimates his social abilities, Richard is about to be abandoned here in this room, with some old woman ("one of my many parents," Jared said) who until today he'd never even met.

Ethel smiles beatifically. "We'll have a grand old time," she says.

\--

The room sits still and quiet. An oxygen concentrator hums at a low, dull pitch. It smells a little funny: a distinctly old-person smell. Stale yet cloying. Aggressively floral. Jared, Richard thinks, would know the name for whatever smell this is. Jared knows things like the names of flowers.

"So you want to, ah?" Richard gestures to the paperback Jared left behind on the doily-covered bedside table. "Should I keep reading?"

"No, no." Ethel shakes her head. She says gruffly, "I prefer Jared read to me." ( _Because of course she does; who wouldn't?_ ) "You and I, we'll chat. C'mon. Scoot over."

Richard slides his chair across the floor, wooden legs screeching on linoleum tile. He can't decide which is a less tolerable scenario: the unstructured social interaction with a stranger, or hearing any more of Gavin Belson's pathetically predictable book. ( _Obviously the lighthouse is a symbol for the feelings Damien still holds for Fiona, even after all these years. Right? A literal goddamn torch. Trite, unimaginative garbage. And Gavin probably plagiarized the entire fucking thing anyway._ Richard scoffs to himself. _Where did Gavin get off becoming a romance novelist? Like that guy had ever loved anyone._ If he didn't have to play nice with a major departmental donor, Richard thinks, he'd tell Gavin Belson exactly what he thought of his book.)

"Does he, ah." Richard searches vainly for something worthwhile to say. "Does Jared read to you often?"

"He visits every day he's in. Reads to me. Tells me about the birds he's seen. About his life." Ethel smiles, distantly but fondly, and a little sadly, too. There's something so familiar about it, something haunting Richard can't quite place. "Jared is a good boy."

"He's, uh. Yeah. A good egg. A good one."

"He tells me _you_ are quite the genius."

Ethel lays a hand on Richard's wrist, and he flinches away from it. Away from this entire subject, which after ten years still feels like a bruise other people can all too easily poke their fingers into. 

"Maybe I was once. Or could've been. Not now."

Ethel laughs. A rusty, creaking thing. It sounds like it might hurt her. "Oh come on. Mr. Fancy Stanford Professor. False modesty never flattered anyone."

Richard bristles at the accusation. He isn't being falsely modest. Not trying to, anyway. Richard is a good teacher; he knows that. And he likes it, too—teaching—it suits him in a way being a CEO never really did. He shares his passions with like-minded students, helps them wrangle with ethical dilemmas, watches them get excited about the exact things he spent years trying and failing to make other people care about. Richard likes that he can just _think_ for a living. And sometimes, in his darker moments, he feels grateful all that thinking keeps him from _doing_ anything. Anything that might destroy the world and ruin all his friends' futures again.

Richard scoffs. "Total genius. Yeah. As far as the rest of the world knows, I oversaw the worst disaster in the history of tech."

"Jared knows," Ethel says insistently. She jabs Richard in the bicep with one bony, gnarled finger, and he rubs aggressively at the tender spot. "Jared knows how smart you are. Richard, Richard, Richard. Good lord. You're nearly all he talks about!"

"Oh, um. Really?" Richard feels himself blush, the tips of his ears hot, and blushes all the more at the fact of his own blushing. There's something he's always liked about it: the ferocity of Jared's affection. Even now, he is acutely aware that knowing Jared thinks so highly of him—that someone who was there for the worst of it still believes the best of Richard—feels actually, frighteningly _good_. Better than tenure, better than consistently high marks on RateMyProfessors (even if he never got a chili pepper, which Jared said exposed the system's "woefully flawed metrics"), better than any of his other accomplishments. "I mean," Richard asks cautiously, "still?"

"You do that," Ethel nods, "when you love somebody. I was like that with my Albert. You want all the world to know how special they are."

"Oh yeah? And did - did you know right away? That he was your person?" 

"Not at first. Lord, I was a little fool! Blind to what was right in front of me."

"Which was?"

"Someone good, and kind, and decent, and who I could be myself around. Who didn't ask for any more or less than that from me. I'm sure that sounds like a terrible bore—believe me, I thought it did too—almost lost my chance with him because of it. I thought it'd never happen, that I was too late, but then one day, it just did." 

Ethel gazes out the window, and Richard follows suit. The grounds around the home are green and lush, and in this airtight room it feels a little taunting. Richard spies a bird perched on a low branch. Round and grey-brown, a violent stripe of yellow on its head. Jared would know the name for it.

"My Albert, he passed last year."

"Oh." Richard scratches at his neck. "Ah. Sorry."

"Don't be. We had our time." Ethel turns away from the window, shifts back to the present from wherever it was she'd gone. "Of course I'd have loved a little more but I only regret that I didn't see it sooner." 

"Were you, uh, together long?"

"Almost fifty years! Through thick and thin, thorns and roses. Longer than you've been alive, boy."

Scared as he is of relationships, single well into his 40s, all those comments at family gatherings about his perpetual bachelorhood, _and when is Richard going to bring someone home for the holidays?_ , prone as he's been to sabotaging every partnership he's ever had the slightest chance at the instant things start to feel too real, Richard can't help but find that loyalty impressive. Something inside him aches terribly with wanting it.

And the one person he knows who is _that_ loyal is—

"Jared doesn't. He doesn't _love_ me. He's just - you know him. He's just like that."

It's not like he—like he and Jared—like anything had ever _happened_ between them. There was that one night, in Vientiane, in the too-small cheap hotel bed, where they'd almost-maybe-sort-of kissed. The flamenco show in Madrid, and Jared begging Richard to dance with him after. All those nights they stayed up too late working together, a shared passion, loyalty, and dedication, the tension thick and fecund in the air.

It'd been all too easy for the other guys to pretend they were mad at him for years. With Jared, that charade had failed spectacularly.

"He's intense about me, I guess."

"Oh pull your head out of your rear-end." Ethel waves dismissively. "He called you a russet-haired, young Gary Cooper, and we don't take such comparisons lightly."

"I'd just." Richard feels, shamefully, as if he might cry. His lower lip wobbles. There's a mass lodged in his throat. "I'd just mess up. I'd just mess _him_ up."

"Kid, all you can do is try. Do you try? To be good to him?" 

"I - I - I gave him a job. I tried to be fair. I didn't take - advantage. And believe me, I very well fucking could have." Richard laughs, a little maniacally, then rests his head in his hands and frowns down at his sneakers. All the math he usually relies on, the complicated calculations that equal out to Richard Hendricks having done the good and right thing, all of them fail him now. And he panics, worried he won't get another chance to tip the scales back. "Did he tell you I fired him? The shit I said. Fuck. I was such a prick. I'd do anything to take that back now. I - I tried. I did. But I could have been better. Could _be_ better. This time. If he lets me."

"Do you know"—Ethel coughs—"what happened with his real parents?"

"They, uh. I think they died? Maybe in a fire?"

Ethel shakes her head. "No no no. Sweet Jesus, child. They're still alive. In Santa Cruz. They gave him away. Can you imagine? A nice boy like that? Cruel. And for no good reason! Wealthy, they are, too." 

Sixteen years knowing each other, and Jared always so eager to share. How had Richard never heard this? "Oh wow, I, uh. He should've told me. I would've - " But what would he have done? He was always so afraid of _doing_ anything.

"He's still looking, you know," Ethel says, gently. She lays her hand on his arm again and, this time, Richard doesn't shrug away from it.

"For his parents?" he asks.

"For somebody who'll keep him." 

\--

"Ethel! Richard!" Jared bounds across the rec room, one of his more manic moods practically radiating off him. "I'm so glad you're here. Sorry I left you for so long. There was a last-minute decorations committee crisis, but thankfully that's all been sorted out." Jared gestures behind him: the streamers, the balloons, the disco ball, the Sally Hawkins movie posters. Persuasion, Made in Dagenham, The Shape of Water, Paddington and Paddingtons 2-4. "Isn't this going to be a blast?"

"Oh, so you really, ah." Richard considers the bizarre choice of decor. "You went all-in on the Sally Hawkins theme, huh?"

But Jared barrels on, as if he hasn't heard the question. "What mischief did you two scamps get up to?"

"We, uh." Richard swallows. He looks at Ethel for some sort of support or confirmation. "We... talked."

Jared clasps his hands together with joy. "Oh I just knew you would hit it off! You share an infectiously passionate spirit."

"Mhmm." Ethel winks. "I like this one. Come, Professor Hendricks. Let's dance. You'll have to hold me up without my walker."

Richard begins to protest, but before he can stammer the words out, Ethel is taking his arm and either he's leading her or she's leading him out onto the dancefloor, and they're swaying in place to Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You." Ethel is so small, curled in against his chest, Richard can look straight over her head and see Jared leaning back against the paneled wall, folding his long arms across his torso, beaming at Richard so proudly. The way that only Jared does. 

His smile: outwardly placid, blissful, calm, and yet it hardly masks the leagues of sadness beneath. The same smile Richard saw in Ethel's bedroom. Pale skin, big ears, smiles like shrugging shoulders. _She could almost be his mother_ , Richard thinks. 

It isn't that Richard's not smart, or even that he isn't observant, but maybe he does go through life a little like he has blinders on, able to turn his razor-sharp focus to only one specific detail at a time. Great when it comes to coding, not great when it comes to life. He'd been so demanded of, all the time they worked together, so overworked and overtired and distracted. His attention, admittedly, had not often been on this.

Richard realizes how it was he'd never seen it, but once he sees it, it is impossible to un-see: the depth of his affection for Jared.

 _I met a woman_ , Joni Mitchell sings over the crackly PA system, and Richard watches Jared, tears in his eyes, gleaming in the light reflected off the disco ball, sing along with every word. Because Jared knows the words to things, and he is not afraid to sing aloud in public. 

_She had a mouth like yours. She knew your life. She knew your devils and your deeds and she said, go to him. Stay with him if you can._

As soon as this song is over, he will ask Jared to dance.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set in an AU where RateMyProfessors never got rid of their degrading chili pepper rating system.


End file.
